[0:00]
We invited Dave to speak intentionally. We wanted to hear him speak about God's word, but we also wanted to hear about Dave and Ruth, and hear about the shape of their marriage and their ministry. And so can you tell us the Dave and Ruth story? Maybe let's hear it from Dave or Ruth? We met at New College at New South Wales University, but I remembered seeing him once before because when we were at a Year 11 camp, so we both came from completely different schools, but there were a few schools at this camp.

[0:31]
So I remember seeing him do some stupid skits. Anyway, a few things that were fairly unforgettable. So he didn't know me, but I recognized him when I saw him at university. So we talked together the first night we were there, and I went there thinking I'd grown up on Lake Macquarie, and I wanted to go to Sydney to go to university so I could find a church. That was my aim. And so I knew I'd be able to find one there.

[1:01]
The first night, we were getting to know different people that were moving into the college, and we were actually having a bush dance at the time, and we were near each other at that time, and they said, would anyone like to go to church tonight? And I'm like, okay. And so we both said, yeah, and so that's when we both went off to church then, ended up sitting next to each other, so ended up in the same Bible study group. Yes, so the rest is history. So how many years ago was that? That was a long time ago. So, 88. 88, and you've been married now for 21 years, is that right?

[1:34]
Great. Can you tell us, what's the shape of marriage and ministry look like at the moment? So what's an average week for the Shea family? Well, we have three children now. Our eldest is 17. He's just finished year 11 exams yesterday. And we have a 15-year-old and then a 13-year-old. So, yeah, they keep us busy. We're on ministering on Central Coast in church there. So I don't work for money.

[2:07]
Work for the church. Yeah, anyway, that's a start. I think one of the helpful things that we do in interviews is, what does the week look like? So you get a sense of how do you spend your time? Yeah, yeah. Where are the, what's the rhythm of it? Where are the high points or low points? Yeah. How do you do with the Monday morning? You know, that was the worst sermon ever. Church attendance. was 10% down. I am an optimist by… I have very few down days. So that does help a bit. But yeah, like Monday morning, we just do something together as a staff

[2:40]
because none of us feel very creative. But, you know, we sort of, I suppose, spur each other on by having a staff meeting. We read the Bible together and we talk about the administrative stuff for the day ahead. Yep. My week looks a lot. But early on, nights were dominated. Now I'm not out at night as much, which is a great blessing. But that's partly because our kids and our teenagers and we're sort of dealing with, they just don't go to bed until, you know, 11 o'clock at night.

[3:11]
And so our time with our kids is now, a lot of it is at night, whereas it used to be in the morning day and so. So a number of these guys have come out of established churches where they've been part of staff teams, where they've been part of, you know, a number of people doing ministry in a context or a place. You came out of EV Church. You came out of a fairly large staff team into then planning a church by itself. How, you know, what was the shape of that then? How did it change? What were the things that you can remember that were challenging

[3:43]
and that also were really great about that? Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm never part of EV Church, although I love EV Church. It's great in church. So Andrew Heard was my MTS worker when we were in, well, our MTS worker when we were in first year university. Yep, yep. And so we've had a connection over those years, but we were never part of EV Church. We were at Christchurchurch, Gladesville, and came up, and there was a bunch from EV that connected in with us as we started.

[4:17]
So the difference between being in that sort of team ministry at Gladesville and being on our own is the weight of responsibility is a big one. And I really think in the early days of planning a church, as many of you know, you're almost doing everything that's going on and there's a deliberateness to that as well, holding things very tight because you don't know yet who to trust and you also want to create a really good culture.

[4:51]
So I was flat out all the time every night. It was a really intense period of ministry. And so I'd come out of this context where I thought I was busy as the assistant pastor. I was in Gladesville. But just that weight of responsibility of preaching every week and having to get to know everyone and being part of this thing that was growing quite quickly, but we just didn't have the resources of leaders, you know, underneath the…

[5:23]
So that was a really time-intense period and it had obvious impacts on our marriage. And I'm not saying it was devastating impacts, but, you know, it puts pressure on it. And you can share some of that. So, yeah, so at that time, I used to liken it a bit to being like a single mum, and I think it is. And you know that on Sundays anyway, don't you? When you've got to look after the babies at church and, anyway, as well as running kids. church or whatever it is you're doing at the same time. Yeah, so, and I think that's, yeah, that's, it is, there's a lot where the husband is out a lot.

[5:59]
I guess it's like that tag teaming thing that we were talking about yesterday, but with church as well as with kids. Yeah. So, yeah, and we, it involved a lot of our house as well, and a lot of you will have that as well. So the church office was in our house. Women's Bible study met in our house. And as it grew, it, one of it, it won. We had three groups of women in the end, and one of them would meet in our bedroom, and the kids would be outside, like everything was in our house, because we don't have many community

[6:31]
buildings around that we could use. And so how long did this go on for? Like, how long was this, you know, intense, you know, a couple of guys that haven't yet kicked off, a few people 18 months in, some of three or four years in. How many years of this did you endure? We still have one of the women's bibles that he meets at my house. still on one of the days because there's just nowhere else for it in the lounge room. And we built a back deck so now, because it used to rain every time it was time for women's Bible study and we live on a swamp pretty much.

[7:01]
So that meant everybody had to be inside. So anyway, yes, so now they can be outside as well. Yeah, so that's less intense. And we don't have the church office in our house anymore. I actually liked having it in the house because it meant I heard things. So when Dave's really busy, he can't, like even now, if things are happening out there, I don't always know everything now, and that's okay. But it was kind of nice that you did know stuff, and so you didn't actually have to talk about everything because I could catch up quicker, if you know what I mean, because I had a vibe of what was going. So I quite liked that. Yeah, I didn't mind.

[7:32]
But it was killing me. And the thing, I went through a personality change from being an extrovert to being an introvert to being an introvert. And so, well, it's, of, you know, at different times, but when I'd have, when, when, no, I'm gone, there you go, you can sort that out while, I'll, when I'd have a day off, I would crave no contact with people.

[8:04]
And I just, I just couldn't, so the idea of having church office in our house was just killing me because, because if someone just wanded in and did a copying or something, it was just, it really impacted me deeply. And so I'd feel like I'd want to flee from our house or when we had holidays, you know, because you've got groups meeting in your house, what are those groups do? And so sometimes the groups would still happen. And so I would just want to get as far away from home as possible. And so I just became, and it's still carried on a bit.

[8:38]
Like my holidays, I don't want to have holidays with other people and I don't want to have days off with other people. I just become very… I'm allowed to me. Yeah, yeah, Ruth. So is that one of the strategies, one of the strategies to get away from people as much as possible? What are some of the other strategies that you found effective in those early years where ministries… Yeah, so holidays are really important. So, yeah, so we would go on holidays. And we actually often went on holidays when our kids were little during school time.

[9:10]
It's cheaper. And so just take them out of school for the week or whatever. It did never do them any harm. And the teachers, you know, I don't know. know if you can do it as easily nowadays because it's more centralized, the kind of, you know, anyway, whether they check up on you or whatever, but it was good. And, yeah, we were talking about it before that because we'd go on holidays, often in school time, we've found that in holiday time, that's when your rosters suddenly fall apart because everyone else has gone on holidays and they forget to tell you. Like, we often said over Christmas, we don't take any holidays over the Christmas holidays

[9:43]
because it's on paper, it looks like it'll be fine, but it never is. You know, there's always gaps to fill. And so we don't know what they are, but there will be. And also people have personal crises around Christmas as well. So that's when all the pastoral care people, you know, end up on your doorstep on Christmas Eve and all that kind of thing. So, yeah, so we, yeah, so it was quite good to have holidays sometimes in school terms as well. And so planning when they would be and knowing, as we went on, knowing the rhythms like that we were talking about yesterday, of when it's going to, we will really, we always have a holiday at the end of November or beginning of December,

[10:17]
before that crazy time. Yeah, so, anyway, like a week we have then, yeah. Yeah, no, well, related to holidays, yeah, I think it is good to, I think it was good for us to clear them out of school holidays and to clear them out of the crises area, you know, the Christmassy sort of period, because you just give up that being a holiday time. And then you can actually enjoy the time of year, you know, because there aren't Bible study groups on at the night. So you can, you've got some.

[10:47]
some space to enjoy that time, but you don't resent the interruptions that are almost certainly going to happen. So you just say, right, that's, okay, it's a work time of my life. And then you can actually cope with it and enjoy it, I reckon. Moving the office, the home office out of, you know, out of home to an offsite place, was that, you know, in hindsight, would have been far better to do that from the start? I know from your perspective, Ruth, it was, you know,

[11:17]
really helpful to know what was going on. Probably those disadvantages, yeah. No, not necessarily. I think it was fine. It was okay. I just had to, you know, I just had to clear out and, you know, find my own space. That was the way I cope with it. Yeah. But, yeah, we're just doing things so lean, so you're just not trying to incur extra expenses. So, yeah, it was okay. And in terms of the change in personality, was that something that you identified, or is that something that Ruth kind of just went? Well, I,

[11:47]
I identify it because when you have to do those, you know, when I did my Geneva assessment and so on, I come out looking like an introvert and I just think, it's just, it's purely ministry that's done that to me. Because I have never been like that. But when I'm answering honestly the questions, I don't want to hang out with people in my spare time. And it's not that I don't like people. It's just that I have my feel during the week. And so many of my people relationships, people,

[12:17]
are wanting something from me and you just, you just feel drained. And so, and you probably noticed that. Do you want to comment on that? Well, our days off when he was on MTS would still be full of people, but now that's, yeah, that's not the case. Yeah. But, yeah. I mean, you have children as well, so that probably changes you anyway in terms of you're giving to them and as they get to teenage years, it's not just physical demands and, you know, not as easy to fix or whatever. So, yeah, that's more draining.

[12:47]
Yeah. Yeah. I think another another thing about how that affected you, Ruth, so you're having a day off together but you may be wanting to hear it with people. So how did you guys go here? Yeah. I think another thing about planning a church, especially if you're going away. So we went out, got married in Sydney. So we had a lot of friends in Sydney. We've gone away from Sydney. I remember meeting with some missionaries and talking with them about how it had been for them and things. and thinking, I think we're like missionaries because we're away from the particular friends

[13:23]
that we would meet with regularly if we could to support us, but we actually don't get to. And I suspect that we are less supported than a missionary in some ways because people don't have in their heads. So with a missionary, you think, oh, they're over there, wherever they are, and I should ring them. And when they come back, we'll catch up and, you know, that kind of thing and make that the time to do that. But when you're planning a church and you're not necessarily that far or whatever, people, you don't naturally do that or don't make the effort to do that. And so I think in some, so this is important, these kind of structures, which we didn't have

[13:57]
when we started, which is why we started FYAC, I guess. But, yeah, so, yeah, you didn't have that support network quite the same. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, but anyway, yeah, it's okay. We're fine. Yeah. So very, very challenging, very hard of the same. start now, you know, 10, 11 years on, light at the end of the tunnel, everything's nice, easy. You've worked all these things out. How do you cope?

[14:27]
What are the strategies you cope now with, now having a staff team, now having a larger church, now having a building program. What does it look like now to cope with the stress of ministry and marriage? Yes, it's different things. But we should, a staff team is a different thing. So, yeah, we started with an MTS worker and his wife, so we always had other people around. But having more people on board and choosing the next person and that kind of thing is quite, you know,

[14:59]
that's always tricky trying to find somebody else. So they're, I don't know, do you want to say anything more about it? So Dave spends more time meeting with staff than he can with on the ground, you know, front line stuff. So that changes again who you are or not. who you are, but you can't necessarily do the same ministry that you maybe wanted to as an evangelist kind of thing. So it does change some things again. Yeah. So, yeah, then meeting with leaders and anyway, as you know, that kind of changes. So conflict is something we thought we should

[15:30]
talk to you about. Yeah. Do you want to start with that one? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Oh, do you want me to start off talking about conflict? Oh, yeah, great. Yeah, you were going to ask me about conflict anyway. Yeah. What's your question for me? My question is, uh, I was going to set it up. You put you through a bit of conflict in church life. Yeah. How have you grown in managing conflict in the church and then in managing it as a relationship and as a marriage? And particularly as a husband and then particularly as a wife.

[16:01]
So hearing obviously bad stuff about Dave, likewise, you know, dealing with conflict with couples in the church. How does it impact you as a couple? Yeah. of this, what have we done, 12 years into the church. Our marriage has been the best, one of the best parts of it all because Ruth's the least complicated person in my life. And it's just lovely having someone who's not complicated,

[16:32]
not got another agenda. Anyway, so I really, I really love our marriage. It's so important. Now, the conflict. So, you know, you come into this, and I've always been the happy-go, like he said a guy, you know, and the friendly guy, you know, everyone thinks Dave, you know, who could ever have a conflict with him. And then, then when conflicts come, gee, you know, really deeply painful. And you sort of live in denial because you think, what, is this really happening to me?

[17:03]
And so, yeah, the conflicts are really deeply painful. But our marriage was just like a really, God's word and our marriage were the two rocks that kept us going through that time. If our marriage hadn't been, you know, strong, I reckon I would have caved on the conflict. So one of the great things was just being able to debrief with Ruth and talk about some of the stuff that was going on.

[17:35]
Tell us how you do that. How do you do it with small kids and you've got no time and how do you do it now your kids are growing up? So how do you get the time to actually do the debrief? given, you know, life was and still is so busy. Oh, we just make the time. But one of our key strategies is walks, going for walks. We do that, and we've done that ever since we were going out. And it is a really great part of our relationship. Because going for a walk, it gets you out there, fresh air and all that sort of stuff. But also good context to walk and it's not, sorry, to talk,

[18:09]
and it's not as intense as sitting over a table, having to look into each other's eyes. So going for regular walks has been great for us. And when the kids were young, we'd just have them on the bikes riding ahead or whatever. So that, yep, I can't remember your question, but walks has been really good to the whole process. And so debriefing, yeah. So you've got to work out who you are and what type of people you are to work out how much you can debrief.

[18:41]
One of the great things about Ruth is I can. I can tell Ruth what's going on, but be confident that it will not prejudice her in her relationships with other people in church. Because once it does start prejudicing, it really can go very bad, badly wrong. So it was great to be able to debrief with Ruth, but be confident that she would still, you know, act in kindness and love and whatever to all the people involved. What I have seen in some people that go through conflict is,

[19:14]
the husband will come in, dump on his wife, she'll be feeling angry and embittered, and he'll cruise on through and get over it, you know, because that's the sort of guy he is. You know, he creates an explosion and then deals with it and moves on to the next explosion he's going to create. And the wife is left with this compounding series of resentment that is very, very destructive. And so I'm really glad that Ruth is not that person, and probably.

[19:44]
I'm not that person either. Yeah. So have you done that, Ruth? Is that just who you are? You don't, you don't have business easily? Yeah, no, I'm not, yeah, I would rather people just tell me something. I don't get offended. I just want to know, yeah, just tell me what you think. I like people being real with me, so that, yeah, anyway, so that's who I am. Yeah, and I think early on in my life, I just discovered that everybody's weird, including me, and that's fine, and so we're all, yeah, that's all right, so we can all just get on with being different, and that's, yeah. So, yeah.

[20:14]
So, yeah, I think the interesting thing, and I don't know the answer to this, or what I could have done different, but in some of, we have had a number of men who've been that kind of explosive kind of person and their wife kind of following behind. And I've been friends with them. And so in one particular situation, we worked out that he wasn't telling her what he was telling us, about himself even, like, not even about the conflict. But so we're like, oh.

[20:44]
what do you do there? Like, and so I was, I felt this situation where I can't really, I don't want to go and kind of, I don't know, intervene in this marriage and try and sort, like it's not my place to try and get honesty happening here when I think there's, you know, so that I felt, found, have found those kind of things difficult. What do you do with this wife where I think they're aware their husband is acting unhelpfully, but how do, but it's my husband. They're unhaired.

[21:14]
unhelpfully to one of the people. So what do I do? And so I, that's been a tricky thing. How do you minister to that wife? And I don't know that I can. I think, so I've, I've had to leave that and or let them come to me rather than me come in insisting that I be the one. I can't be the one, I think, to then help them in that situation. So that's a, that's a sadness because I can still be friends with them, but I can't be as real with them as I would like to be. Yeah, if that makes sense. Yeah. So that's a tricky thing when,

[21:44]
in teams that that can happen or even just with people that you're ministering with, you know, shoulder to shoulder. Yeah. Great. I might throw it over to a couple of questions from the floor. How do you reckon you've gone with technical? Yeah. It hasn't happened to us in terms of it hasn't been a really public thing. Like the conflicts that have happened to kind of been quieter. So that's,

[22:14]
it's been a blessing. We have friends at the moment who their 10-year-old has depression because the church is, it's a Baptist church and they're kicking them out. It's just awful. And yeah, and I just, yeah, I'm cross about that because it's not fair. Yeah. Yeah, no, generally not. And our blessing is our elders has some hearing loss and really doesn't care about relationships. I was never listening. Our youngest, she's on to it, but she was younger at the time when we were having major things.

[22:44]
So that is a blessing. The other thing I think is a blessing in planning a church was I loved it. One day, one of the kids said, I know who's the boss of church. I was like, oh, yeah, who's that? Him. And it's the guy in charge of morning tea who was really strict and structured about it. I was like, all right, okay. Yeah, so it just wasn't a big thing that Dave, like I think in a more traditional church, you know that your father's the pastor or the priest or whatever. But they saw other people get up and lead the meeting.

[23:14]
and then they'd go off to kids church or whatever and he'd preach or they might see him do it sometimes, but not all the time. So when we prayed for Dave going off to night church because he's going to tell people about Jesus, well, of course, everyone else would probably be doing the same thing for their father. Do you know what I mean? So it never became a big thing for them. Yeah. So our kids thought the guy on morning tea was the boss of the church. And there was another girl, there's another kid in church that thought I was Jesus for a while. So anyway, there's that because she had long hair? we've probably got time for one more question and then we're going to break up into blokes and women.

[23:50]
So the question is where do you get friends from? Are they outside the church? Are they inside the church? Yep. So I am friends with lots of people in church, but not, I wouldn't describe many of them as deep friendships. And I feel, yeah, I feel that sort of tension. But I, so I think there are genuine, genuine, healthy relationships that I have with a whole bunch of people.

[24:26]
And I think you need to have an expansiveness to your love for brothers and sisters. And, yeah, so, and there are certain people that I connect with very well and who are not very demanding. And we have good relationships. but probably my deepest relationships are still outside the church. So some of the peers that I went through college with or, you know, from former days. And we catch up a couple of times a year.